This past Saturday I made a batch of chicken wings with two different sauces.  Both were very tasty.  The first one was a variation of the Chipotle Chicken Thighs marinade, where I used roasted red bell peppers instead of chipotles.  The other recipe was an Orange Chipotle marinade that I kind of came up with just by walking around the grocery store.

Roasted Red Bell Pepper Marinade Ingredients:

• 15 oz jar roasted red bell peppers
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 1 lemon,juiced
• 3 C mayonnaise
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3.5 lbs chicken wings, cut at each joint, tips tossed

Roasted Red Bell Pepper Marinade Instructions:

1. In a blender combine the roasted peppers, cilantro, lemon juice, mayonnaise, and onion and blend till well mixed.
2. Put cut chicken wings in a resealable plastic bag and pour marinade in.
3. Let wings marinate for approximately 4 hours.

Orange Chipotle Marinade Ingredients:

• 2 jars orange marmalade
• 1 7 oz can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 1/2 bunch cilantro
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 3.5 lbs chicken wings, cut at each joint, tips tossed

Orange Chipotle Marinade Instructions:

1. In a blender mix in the marmalade, chipotles in adobo sauce, cilantro, and onion and blend till well mixed.
2. Put cut chicken wings in a resealable plastic bag and pour marinade in.
3. Let wings marinate for approximately 4 hours.

Grilling Instructions:

1. Prepare grill for medium indirect heat
2. Place wings on grill away from fire (prevent flare ups)
3. Grill till wings are done, approximately 10-15 minutes

Hashbrown Casserole Ingredients:

• 30 oz bag frozen hashbrowns
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 C sour cream
• 2 C shredded mild cheddar cheese

Hashbrown Casserole Instructions:

1. Preheat over to 350 degrees
2. In a bowl, mix together the sour cream, cream of mushroom soup, and cheese
3. Add in the hashbrowns and mix well
4. Pour mixture into an 8 x 12 baking dish
5. Bake for 45 minutes

Results:

As you can tell I like a couple of ingredients a lot.  Chipotle Peppers in adobo and Cilantro have been two ingredients I have used a lot of this BBQ season.  They both bring in a lot of flavor.  I ended up cooking the wings with low direct heat, and had a lot of flare ups, but wings still came out great.  The chipotle wings had a lot more flavor then the roasted red pepper wings.  Next time I do the roasted red peppers I will probably add in another jar of the roasted red peppers and maybe some seasoning like Paprika.  The chipotle wings had a average spiciness to them, if you are looking for something very spicy, add another 7 oz can of chipotles in adobo.  The Hashbrown casserole is a family favorite and if we do have leftovers they do not sit around for long.

As many of you are aware the Midwest is having some of its worse floods ever.  Some of the people that are affected the most are the medium and small sized farmers in the area that run community-supported agriculture operations and help supply the local framers' markets.  The biggest issue are these are the farmers that do not have flood or crop insurance.  These farmers run on very slim margins and are very dependant on their crops to make ends meet.

A friend and former co-worker has sent me information on how all of us can help and has posted a great blog post on The Inadvertent Gardener.  This post also talks about how others are helping the farmers of the Midwest.

If you think you can help, please visit Farm Aid.  All money donated will go to the small to medium sized farmers that really need the help.  If you cannot give money at this time, please help raise awareness by pass this information along on your blog, in forums, or any other way. 

As some of you probably noticed the look and feel of my blog has changed a lot over the last few months.  I am now a feature publisher on FoodBuzz.com and also part of the Foodie BlogRoll.  So if you have a blog about cooking or food in general you should check out these two sites.  They are both great communities for people with a food passion.

As I have found out there were a few bugs in my blog that were not noticed by me.  Since I use Firefox to do my web browsing, I didn't realize there were a lot of things that didn't work in Internet Explorer.  Sorry to all those out there that tried to leave me a comment and it just did not work.  If you  notice any other issues, feel free to contact me.

This was what I had planned to grill on Father's Day, but due to everything going on in Iowa right now, just did not have the time.  The sump pump in our basement stopped working and the pit was about 2 inches from flooding the basement.  So I spent majority of the weekend pumping water out of the sump pit, hoping to get the pump replaced.  I finally got the water out, but ran out of time to replace the pump.  But all is good, because it is rare that our sump pit fills up.  Definitely not an ideal Father's day, but we are definitely a very lucky family considering the 1000s of homes that were destroyed in the Cedar Rapids area this past week.  I would like to also say that the city officials in this area are during a superb job of getting information out to the public with what is happening and dealing with this tragedy.  So far there has been minimal deaths, injuries, and looting and the city officials deserve all the credit for keeping things under control.

This afternoon though, my wife gave me a call and asked if we can cook this chicken recipe I wanted to cook yesterday from the book Taming the Flame.  So of course that got me excited and wanting to do it, but I was at work and wouldn't have had time to let it marinate in the sauce.  Then my wonderful wife volunteered to do the preparation work for me and we were in business.

Ingredients:

• 1 white onion, chopped,
• 1 bunch fresh cilantro
• 1 7-ounce can chipotles in adobo
• 2 limes, 1 juiced and 1 quartered
• 2 to 3 C mayonnaise
• 8 chicken thighs or 2 chickens, cut into pieces

Instructions:

1. In a blender, blend the onion, cilantro, chipotles with adobo sauce, and lime juice.
2. Add a pinch of salt
3. Transfer to a non-reactive bowl
4. Fold in 2 cups of mayonnaise, taste and if too spicy add a little more mayonnaise
5. Add the chicken, cover and refrigerate for 2 to 4 hours
6. Prepare the grill for grilling with medium indirect heat
7. Grill and the last 10 to 15 minutes transfer to direct heat to get it a bit more crispy
8. let the chicken sit for 10 minutes before serving and serve with lime wedges

Results:

Everyone loved the chicken, plenty of flavor, a wonderful smell, and a perfect amount of spice to it.  The mayonnaise mixture is great and would be good on a hamburger.  I would give this recipe 5 out of 5 stars and would recommend this to anyone, especially if looking to grill something with a bit of spice to it.

The other day, I decided to cook up some Black Bean Burgers which I had blogged about a couple other times.  They always turn out great, but this time I wanted  to do something different with them.  First off I wanted to add corn kernels to the mixture and use refried black beans.  This is the recipe I came up with:

Ingredients:

• 2 20.5 oz cans refried black beans
• 1 can whole kernel corn
• 2 C chunky salsa
• 3 T Tabasco Sauce
• 2 T cumin
• 1 white onion, chopped
• 1 1/2 C plain bread crumbs

I mixed up all the ingredients in a bowl and formed the patties.  I made about 10 patties and probably had enough for 14 patties.  I then put them on the grill over direct medium heat and I noticed right away that they were not going to stick together.  I attempted to turn the patties over around 5 minutes and they completely fell apart.  I could of probably used more bread crumbs, but I do not think this would have held the refried black beans together.  As this ended up being an experiment gone bad, but then my wife pulled out some crackers and dipped it into the black beans and started commenting how much of a great dip this was.  I then had to try it, and she was absolutely correct, so here is the recipe for the Accidental Ultimate Black Bean Dip:

Ingredients:

• 1 20.5 oz cans refried black beans
• 1 can whole kernel corn
• 1 C chunky salsa
• 2 T Tabasco Sauce
• 1 T cumin
• 1 white onion, chopped

Instructions:

Mix all ingredients together and server with tortilla chips or crackers.